Muscle Bros May Not be Meatheads

Hal Cranmer
March 02, 2026

There was a time about 70-80 years ago that many people thought weightlifting was not something most normal people did.

Women thought it would make them lose their feminine figure.

Men, especially athletes, were not into it because they thought it would make them muscle-bound and therefore lose their agility and speed.

From those days to today, there is still a lingering image of people, especially men, with a lot of muscle being ‘meatheads’. In other words, the more muscle, the less intellectual they were.

Fast forward to today and lots of people are lifting weights. Resistance training is popular among both men and women.

Not popular enough in my opinion. Especially in older people.

A recent study is showing a direct correlation between moderate to heavy resistance training and brain aging.

The study was a randomized-controlled trial of 309 participants. The participants were assigned to one of three groups:

Heavy-resistance training (70-85% of one repetition maximum for an exercise)
Moderate-resistance training
Non-exercise control group

They had resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) assessments of their brains at baseline and then over one and two-year intervals. The results were very interesting:

“Local analyses revealed increased prefrontal functional connectivity following heavy training, while moderate- and heavy-resistance training significantly reduced brain age (-1.4 to -2.3 years, pFDR < 0.05). These effects emerged at the whole-brain level, rather than within isolated networks such as the default mode, motor, or cerebellar systems. These findings suggest a hierarchical organization of brain aging, driven by distributed network-level changes and expressed through focal regional patterns. Resistance exercise training decelerates brain ageing, as indexed by brain clocks, reinforcing its role as a preventive strategy for brain health.”

The researchers found you can actually reverse brain aging through weightlifting.

Those meatheads may not be the smartest people in the room, but their brains may be in better shape than the nerds.

The study also references other studies that show weightlifting does improve cognition, mental wellbeing, and is protective against neurodegeneration.

One of the problems with our older generations is that some of them may still have those feelings from 70-80 years ago. They believe weightlifting does not help you.

Especially with the aches and pains they feel at their advanced ages. They think soreness on top of their current pain doesn’t sound too appealing.

Energy levels decrease with age as well, making it more difficult to find the motivation to start a serious weightlifting program.

Like most things in life however, overcoming the hard challenges provide the most rewards. I’ve been a pest to my parents for about 20 years now, and the dividends are paying off. Here’s my father working out at about age 86 (he’s 88 now).

So if you are a bit older and feel your brain slowing down, consider turning to your muscles to help your cognition.

In the second half of your life your muscles are actively weakening and breaking down - a condition called sarcopenia. When you’re in your 20’s your muscles are still in good shape.

That means it’s actually more important to head to the gym in your later years than in your youth.

We need more elderly meatheads.